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CONTENTS

Brian Greenwood .... 2

TAP News ................. 4

West Coast Meeting . 5

Important News ........ 9

CPD Preview ........... 10

Key Dates ................ 11

This issue of the ACMG eBulletin is brought to you by:

photo: Urs Kallen

Tales of Flood and pestilenceThe thought of endless winter used to be exciting to me. To be able to ski daily was a joy available to only those fortunate enough to live in our part of the world. These days, however, as I try to pack up to head south for some desert riding, the joy has taken on a different per-sona: using ice tools (Terrordactyls are best) to dinner plate ice dams from the roof; digging thousands of snow profiles to move literally tons of snow away from the house; determining water equivalent by bucketing hundreds of litres of melted snow away from the foundation and popping more Vitamin I than I have in many years. I think the upcoming trip may be more desert napping than anything else.

But enough whining…welcome to the 2nd e-Bulletin of 2018. Lots of good info lies within, so read on to ensure you don’t miss a thing. I know how impactful FoMO can be…

Brian Greenwood on CMC Wall -Yamnuska

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Brian Greenwood 1934 - 2018

Brian Greenwood died on April 6, 2018 at the end of a good life. He was born in 1934 in Hebden Bridge, a steep-hilled woolen mill town in the Pennines of West Yorkshire.

Brian immigrated to Canada in 1956 and settled in Calgary because it was close to the Rockies. Within a year he was doing serious climbs, and over an 18 year career his record of first ascents, establish-ment of new routes, first ascents on hard north faces and winter ascents and traverses was remarkable. He was instrumental in the establishment of the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides, and in 1965 he organized and instructed the first guides course in Canada.

In his 40’s he moved to Golden, B.C. where he met Nancy, the community librarian. In 1980 they started their life together, and moved to Duncan on Vancouver Island where he transitioned from climb-ing to sailing, and spent the next 10 sailing the inside waters, often single-handing, in his 27 foot sloop. At home he dug a basement under their hillside cottage with a shovel and wheelbarrow. In their garden he built dry stone walls, and granite terraces and rock stairways. When his sailing days were over, he started cycling and continued into his 80’s. He loved to garden, and he grew the best strawberries in the whole world.

Nancy will miss him forever, but in his journey toward death he always said he would die with gratitude for the good life he had had. He felt fortunate for the enduring friendships with fellow climbers. He will be missed by his daughter Arwen, named for the Princess in “Lord of the Rings”. She was the apple of his eye. He was so proud of his sons, all good men, all loved: Robin, Brandy and Dorn.

No service is planned, but please raise a glass in memory of Brian.

He went “gentle into that good night.”

Nancy Greenwood

Brian Greenwood

“... he lists his most important contribu-tion to Canadian climbing as repre-senting an alterna-tive attitude to the sport, which was more attractive to the younger gen-eration of climbers who emerged in the 1960s.”

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ACMG eBulletinBrian Greenwood is a legend in the Rockies, having been at the cutting edge of Canadian climbing in the 1960s. Born in Yorkshire, England, his climbing philosophy influ-enced by reading Rebuffat, Buhl and Gervassutti, Brian arrived in Canada in 1956 and quickly established him-self within the Calgary Mountain Club and racked up an unprecedented resume of serious new routes.

On Yamnuska, his name became synonymous with steep, classic and conservatively-rated routes such as Belfry, Corkscrew, Missionary’s Crack, Balrog, and the most famous of all, Red Shirt, certainly one of the most popular rock climbs in the area. But it was on serious alpine routes that he really established his reputation. In 1957, Brian established the first route up the steep quartzite of the Tower of Babel at Moraine Lake. The fol-lowing year, with Dick Lofthouse he completed the fourth ascent (and first in one day) of Mount Alberta. Three new routes were completed in 1961: the North Ridge of Mount Babel, the Northwest Ridge of Deltaform, and the North

Face of Mount Edith. In 1966, he set new standards of commitment with his new route on the North Face of Mount Temple, the now famous Greenwood-Locke route.

His crowning achievement may well have been the epic East Face of Mount Babel in 1970. Brian’s last serious climb in the Rockies was the North Face of Mount Kitchener, followed by Salathe Wall in Yo-semite, which he climbed in 1974. He retired to the West Coast in 1982.

Brian Greenwood was one of the founding members of the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides, but he lists his most important contribution to Canadian climbing as representing an alternative attitude to the sport, which was more attractive to the young-er generation of climbers who emerged in the 1960s.

Courtesy of Chic Scott

Brian Greenwood

Brian and Barry at the ACMG 50th Celebration

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TAP

Training and Assessment Program (TAP)After several months of mania, the TAP is open and the ACMG has officially launched the pro-gram that will replace Thompson Rivers University’s CMSG. Three amazing staff are in place and have been working closely with the admin team to ensure a seamless transition:

Derek Wilding (ACMG RG/CGI3) – TAP Director

Geoff Osler (ACMG Mountain Guide) – TAP Operations Manager

Laura Newsome (ACMG DHG/AHG) – TAP Administration

Derek’s background as an instructor at Mount Royal University along with his extensive history with the CMSG program gives him both the academic institution credentials along with hands-on experience with our guide training regime.

Geoff was a CMSG instructor and has both the risk management and course logistics side dialed.

Laura is a very talented administrator who worked for many years with CMH and, similar to the admin team’s Laura Young, has an eye for making systems more efficient. This triumvirate provides huge horsepower to not only drive the program forward but greatly improve it.

Chris Miller, the admin team’s IT specialist, has worked with the TAP team to develop a regis-tration process that is already significantly easier and more integrated with payment. Using a Student Information System known as ampEducator, students may now register all their infor-mation electronically and pay for courses using the same venue. This eliminates the need to hand enter data into a database and also ensures prompt payment.

I want to congratulate everyone who worked so hard to put this program in place in a very short time. How the program evolves and who delivers it after May 2019 will be up to the Board of Directors, who are taking an additional day at their spring meeting to ensure there is adequate discussion time for this extremely important topic.

Training and Assessment ProgramACMGA C M G

SINCE 1963 DEPUIS

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ACMG eBulletinWest Coast Meeting

In March, Permit Manager Janet Miller and I took a quick trip to Squamish to meet with a vari-ety of members regarding permits, insurance and business models. We also put out a notice inviting members to join us for food and beverage as part of an evening of conversation and general Q&A. About twenty members joined us and the conversation was lively. I want to thank all those folks for taking the time to meet with us – there’s nothing we enjoy more than meeting face to face with members and getting to know them a little bit better.

Here is a summary of what was talked about:

TAPPeople were very interested in hearing an update on how the new training program was shak-ing out. We talked about:• How the program was laid out on the ACMG website• How we are working on accrediting ourselves as an educational institution in order to allow

student funding opportunities• Whether we would consider keeping the program ourselves and the value of having some

separation between the arm that does the training and assessment and the arm that holds the membership

• That the appeals process will largely be the same as with TRU• That we are still enforcing the three year timeline for apprentices to challenge the certificate

exam• That we are definitely not losing the indoor programs• That how we handle the CGI3 will be determined by a program review that is currently un-

der way by the Technical Committee• Whether TAP credits could be used to carry over toward other academic credits. This gen-

erated a long discussion on the lack of interest in the for-credit guide training program that existed in parallel to the CMSG at TRU and that the nature of guide training doesn’t lend itself to credit equivalency in other academic streams

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Climbing InstructorsIt was awesome to see several climbing instructors at the meeting. Aside from the above dis-cussions on the future of Climbing Gym Instructor’s (CGI) in the TAP and the evolution of the CGI3, we also talked about:

• The impact that the WorkSafeBC regulation requiring CGI certification to work 3 meters off the ground has impacted the ability to find route-setters, as many route-setters don’t wish to take the full CGI1 course. There was a question on whether the route-setting portion could be skived off. I offered little hope that this would occur, but agreed to take it to the Technical Committee for their program review.

• Lauren from Ground Up Climbing Gym has some suggestions regarding a long-term athlete development model. When she provides them to us, I’ll take this forward to the TC as well

• The frustration that gyms and aspiring climbing instructors felt because it has been so diffi-cult to get courses to run in the past, yet there is the WorkSafe requirement to fulfill. I indi-cated that we expect to see better results from TAP, in part because the director is a CGI3.

Apprentice Guide Three Year TimelineThere was some talk around how it’s very difficult for apprentices in the alpine stream to feel ready to challenge the Alpine Guide exam within three years of taking the AAG, given that they need to train for both ice and alpine. They made a strong case for increasing the timeline to four years. I indicated that I would bring this forward to the Technical Director for discussion, but it’s impor-tant to recognize that increasing this to four years essentially means that apprentices have twelve years to become fully certified. There is no other training or academic institution anywhere that al-lows this much time to complete education.

There was also a bit of heat in a discussion around why we allowed the existence of perma-nent apprentice guides. There was a sense from one member that this was an “old boy’s club” move. I talked about how this is a common ap-proach among organizations when the goal posts are changed as they were in 2012 when the three year guideline was instituted. Prior to 2012, there was no expectation by the association that

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photo: Gery Unterasinger

ACMG eBulletin

members need to complete their certification. Therefore, when this changed, we gave existing apprentices the option to enter the three year cycle or remain apprentices permanently. If they chose the latter, they need to take one additional day of CPD per year. If they went inactive or resigned, they would automatically be put into the three year cycle upon reinstatement.

Top Rope Climbing Instructor’s Taking Work from Apprentice Rock Guides & Rock GuidesThere was some sense that, on the West Coast, TRCI’s were being hired to do rock school work in place of ARG’s because they were less expensive. We indicated that the Scope of Practice for TRCI’s was extremely limited and that we had been talking to some businesses about how they were being used. The Association’s responsibility is around the Scope of Prac-tice and ensuring that this is adhered to, but, we don’t become involved in business matters. It’s up to businesses and other guides to work out their business-related concerns. That said, if a business is using ACMG TRCI’s improperly, we will have (and have had) a conversation with them.

Insufficient Apprentice Ski Guides (ASG) and Ski Guides (SG)A concern was raised that there are not enough people who are certified to guide skiing and that the TAP should run more ASG and SG courses. I indicated that, while this is possible, we

also don’t want to reduce our entry standards just to have more bodies available. There are also physical limits to the number of courses that we can run. Nonetheless, the TAP team will examine this possibility

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CAA Level 2Some concern and frustration was expressed by a number of members around the difficulty in getting into CAA level 2 courses. A question was raised about whether the ACMG can do any-thing about this – perhaps arrange for an ACMG-specific level 2.

Prior Learning Assessment Reviews (PLARs)There were some questions around what’s happening with Prior Learning Assessment Re-views that are required to obtain certificate equivalency. Evidently there is a large backlog with TRU. I indicated that I would discuss with Derek, the TAP director, how we might help address the backlog. The process we will use to deal with new PLAR requests will be similar to that used by TRU but we will try to apply enough resources to them to ensure that backlogs are minimized.

BC Parks PermitsThere were some questions around the BC Parks Permit as it applies to hiking guides and recognition of ACMG certification as minimum qualification for mountain guiding. The permit is up for renewal in 2020 – BC Parks is not interested in changes until that time. If hiking guides wish to guide in BC parks, they will, for the time being, need to obtain their own permit. This is not difficult and we can help point you in the right direction.

Despite many attempts at all bureaucratic and political levels, BC parks sees no reason to limit mountain guiding to people with ACMG certification or its equivalent. From their perspective, if you are able to obtain insurance, then you’re good to go. We will raise this again in the future.

Thanks again to everyone who was able to make the meeting. It was a good balance of providing information and hearing some thoughts for us to consider. The Howe Sound Brew Pub was incredible at helping us out. Even though the restaurant area was closed, they opened it for us alone and the manager served us the food and beer herself. That’s service!

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ACMG eBulletinACMG in a LawsuitIn February, the ACMG was named in a law suit stemming from the avalanche incident at Golden Alpine in 2016. We are unable to provide details on the suit while it remains before the court, but we look forward to a positive resolution under the leadership of our legal team.

One repercussion of the suit is a significant increase in the premium of our liability insurance. The ACMG will not seek to recoup this in the current insurance year, as many of you have already paid for your insurance, but we will need to increase rates next year for the first time in 12 years. We are in excel-lent financial shape to weather the resulting deficit and I will be managing our budget accordingly to minimize the impending shortfall at year end.

NEW! Extended Health InsuranceAs of March, you are now able to purchase extended medical insurance through the ACMG, thanks to the ex-cellent partnership we have with Lifestyle Financial Bro-kers of Vernon. This insurance provides paramedical and dental coverage – something that has been a gap in our member service offering for some time.

If you are interested, check it out at ACMG Extended Health Plan. You would deal directly with Lifestyle and, as a bonus, 2% of each purchase returns to the ACMG from which we will establish a new scholarship.

Spring Board of Directors MeetingThe spring meeting of your Board will take place on June 1 and 2 in Canmore. If you have any association-level issues you would like to have brought forward, please contact your board rep-resentative. Their names and contact information are on the member website under Contacts > BOD.

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Save The Date June Cpd - Revelstoke!!

The first of the 2018 CPD sessions will be held in Revelstoke, June 18th - 20th.

Using the feedback of our members we have a stellar line up of CPD sessions including Tech-nical sessions on anchors and belays, improvised rock rescue, supervision and more! For our members who want to brush up on your soft skills we have introduced some new sessions for 2018 ranging from Professionalism in teams, Conflict modes and Risk sessions.

Whatever you’re looking to brush up on this year we have a wide range of topics and sessions for all our members!

And for all the social people we have out there we will once again be hosting a social event on Tuesday June 19th. Come and join us for a chance to have a beer and some food with your colleagues or an opportunity to network and meet new members. Stayed tuned for more de-tails to come.

Earlybird Registration opens May 7th so be sure to sign up early to secure your spot and receive the early bird discount.

CAA Spring Conference in PentictonThe ACMG will be attending the CAA Spring Conference in Penticton, stop by the Trade show on May 1st from 5:00pm - 9:00pm to say hi, ask us any questions or purchase an ACMG hat or Jacket (Limited sizes are available). We will be accepting e-transfer, cash or cheque, and remember to bring your ACMG card with current stickers.

Spring CPD

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Key Association Dates (subject to change)

The home page of the member website has a calendar on which the dates for important association events are inscribed. Here’s a quick overview of some of them:

• May 1: Lose membership for nonpayment of dues• April 30 - May 4: CAA Spring Conference - Penticton• June 1-2: Spring Board of Directors Meeting - Canmore• June 3: Conduct Review Committee Training - Canmore• June 18-20: CPD - Revelstoke• July 22: Arc’teryx Climbing Festival - Squamish

Back Issues of eBulletin and Arête NewsletterBack issues can be found on the members site:Arête: http://www.acmg.ca/02member/communication/newsletter.aspeBulletin: http://www.acmg.ca/02member/communication/bulletin.asp

Proud Partners

The ACMG eBulletin is written, designed and published by the ACMG Administration Team. Its primary purpose is to keep the membership informed and up to date on association issues, events and news.

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